Cody Willard: Why I’m not on TV anymore

By Cody Willard

We have thousands of Top 5 Apps Lists for all kinds of interests, hobbies and professions at AppConsumer.com. You can search for the best five apps for your own interest, hobby or profession (ie, art, guitarists, football, weight-loss, investment, etc) using the search box below and click through to AppConsumer:

Loading

It’s now been six months since I quit Fox and it seems that so far I can’t bring myself to go back on TV. I guess anchoring more than 500 live one hour news shows from the Bull & Bear bar inside the crown jewel of the Hilton empire, the Waldorf-Astoria as my very first job on TV can do that to a guy.

While the highs of having been a personal guest of the Steinbrenner’s at Yankee Stadium and having played football against actual NY Giants on their field, I can also tell you that there was a huge trade off by working in an industry driven by people who get to see their own faces on TV spouting opinions about things they’ve never even heard of or bothered to research, much less actually understand.

I gave it everything I had and I met so many incredible people, I learned a lot, I had a blast and experienced more than I ever thought I could have.

And yes, I have actually been working with a couple of the big TV networks on some ideas, but we’ll have to see how those play out. But the fact is that my income dropped tremendously when I closed the hedge fund I’d been successfully running for five years to take the TV job. And as you loyal readers know, I truly think that there are some once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to make money and build new businesses in the app revolution.

So even though I’ve had a lot of interest and even some offers about hosting another TV show, I find myself channeling all my time, energy and money on apps and writing about apps and helping others make money on apps. I founded AppConsumer.com on August 1, 2010 and we’ve just now had more than half a million unique visitors and more than a million pageviews three months in. Did I mention that I think there’s a lot of money to be made in the app revolution? According to Alexa, AppConsumer.com is now ranked in the top 15,000 of all sites in the US and its number 79,000 or so planetwide. We’re pretty pleased with that kind of growth and I’m now meeting with some people here in NYC who’ve been wanting to put some money into the company. We’ll see how it plays out, but I’m definitely bullish on AppConsumer.

I’ve also owned RevolutioNetwork.com for years and we’ve got several others sites on there that we’ve built over the last couple years that we’re trying to figure out how to monetize too. We’ve built and are hosting several exciting new sites –

GolfCaddy.TV, a content site/hub focusing on the best golf videos, apps and tech reviews

Siliconomy.com, a content site/hub focusing on tech business news, videos and business apps

CancelledShows.TV, a video-centric social network with an existing database of thousands of classic TV shows

GoSuck.It, the funniest and coolest and stupidest social network on the entire Innerspace net thingee

Meanwhile, the readership of this blog is up more than ten-fold since I quit Fox and started focusing on apps and writing on apps. AppConsumer’s exploded in the first ninety days since I launched it. I’ve got several book offers, mostly about apps. I’m also working with a certain rock n roll legend from a certain band that was grateful about death to try to build an entire new cable news channel. I’m also going to start managing some money again for some very wealthy friends.

So I’m pretty busy even without TV. Heck, we’re busy enough over here that you should let me know if you’ve got some ideas or are interested in helping us figure out how to monetize any of the above, as I could probably use the help at this point.

Story Conversation

About The Cody Word

Cody Willard writes the Revolution Investing investment newsletter for MarketWatch and posts the trades from his personal account at TradingWithCody.com He is the founder of WallStreetAll-Stars.com and the principal of CL Willard Capital. Cody serves as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and is on the University of New Mexico Alumni Board. He was an anchor on the Fox Business Network, where he was the co-host of the long-time #1-rated show on the network, Fox Business Happy Hour. Cody, a former hedge fund manager, and his stock picks and economic outlooks have been featured on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, ABC’s 20/20, CBS Evening News, CNBC’s SquawkBox, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, as well as in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many other outlets.